They Killed Our President
Page 28
So, when you add it all up, you can see that there was some extremely high-octane hatred that was targeted on JFK; and much of it was centered right in Texas.
545 Carl Sifakis, The Mafia Encyclopedia (Facts on File: 1999), 127.
546 Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Ebury: 2012)
547 Robert F. Kennedy, The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee’s Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa and Corrupt Labor Unions (De Capo Press: 1994)
548 Seymour M. Hersh, The DarSide of Camelot (Back Bay Books: 1998): bztv.typepad.com/ Winter/DarkSideSummary.pdfx
549 Sam Giancana & Chuck Giancana, Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America (Skyhorse Publishing: 2010).
550 G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel and Staff Director, Gary T. Cornwell, Deputy Chief Counsel & Michael Ewing, Researcher, “Appendices to Final Report of Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Congress, Second Session,” January 2, 1979: jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/jfk9/hscv9e.htm#threat
551 Ibid.
552 Ibid.
553 John Simkin, “Theory: Texas Oil Men,” Spartacus Educational, retrieved 20 May 2013: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKSinvestOil.htm
554 Ibid.
56
Complicity of the CIA
I’d like to look at the area of specific evidence of CIA involvement. People often speculate that “the CIA did it” but fail to really provide any evidence; and without evidence, it’s just a vague assertion.
Here’s what we now know. The CIA-Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro were somehow related to JFK’s murder. The CIA conducted a cover-up after the assassination, hiding a now obvious role in the relationship between alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. intelligence, particularly in regard to his false defection to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But those points are broad and pretty general. So what do we know specifically?
The large CIA station in South Florida known as JM/WAVE appears to have played a major role in the organization phase of the conspiracy. Specifically, William “Wild Bill” Harvey and David Morales from JM/WAVE, and CIA officer Cord Meyer were named in the deathbed confession of CIA Officer E. Howard Hunt as having directly participated in the JFK assassination.555 Anti-Castro exile groups apparently involved in the assassination, such as the “Alpha 66” group, were also affiliated with JM/WAVE, as were mobsters Johnny Roselli and John Martino.556
The fact that Johnny Roselli was even brought into Dallas to abort the assassination, with the special team from military intelligence, is another strong indication that the plot to kill Kennedy was hatched out of those anti-Castro black ops based in Florida.557
CIA Officer David Phillips handed us another such clue. As Phillips put it in an unpublished manuscript found after his death that mirrored the roles of both Oswald and Phillips in the weeks leading up to the assassination:
I was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald. After working to establish his Marxist bona fides, we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba . . . I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro.558
The CIA was also obviously involved in the visits of an Oswald “double” to Mexico City. As has been observed by investigators who’ve delved into the matter, the purpose of that double was apparently to link Oswald to KGB assassin Valeriy Kostikov, thereby building an intelligence “legend” whereby JFK’s assassination could be blamed on the Soviets and Cubans.559
[At] 9:20 a.m. on the morning of November 23, CIA Director John McCone briefed the new President. In [historian Michael] Beschloss’ words: ‘The CIA had information on foreign connections to the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, which suggested to LBJ that Kennedy may have been murdered by an international conspiracy.’ It would be wrong however to think that the CIA cover-up was limited to defusing this Phase-One impression of an international conspiracy. The CIA, by covering up the falsity of the alleged Oswald phone call to the Soviet Embassy, actually helped strengthen a spurious supposed link between Oswald and an alleged Soviet assassination expert, Valeriy Kostikov.560
That reported visit by Oswald to Kostikov was false, but nevertheless was information that made it all the way from the CIA to the President of the United States, where it was considered vitally important and formed the basis of the national security cover-up:
It is not certain whether the conspiracy [CIA Director John]
McCone referred to on November 23 involved Cuba or the Soviet Union. Beschloss’s account implies that McCone’s “information” concerned Oswald’s alleged visit in September 1963 to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City:
‘A CIA memo written that day reported that Oswald had visited Mexico City in September and talked to a Soviet vice consul whom the CIA knew as a KGB expert in assassination and sabotage. The memo warned that if Oswald had indeed been part of a foreign conspiracy, he might be killed before he could reveal it to U.S. authorities.’
Johnson appears to have had this information in mind when, a few minutes after the McCone interview, he asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover if the FBI ‘knew any more about the visit to the Soviet embassy.’561
To sum up: That false intelligence legend of Oswald as a communist— with links to the KGB’s assassination apparatus as well as to Castro via the Fair Play for Cuba Committee—were a ploy to justify a U.S. retaliatory air strike against Cuba.
As Peter Dale Scott noted:
We know from other sources that Bobby Kennedy, on the afternoon of November 22, was fearful of a Cuban involvement in the assassination. Jack Anderson, the recipient of much secret CIA information, suggests that this concern may have been planted in Bobby’s head by CIA Director McCone.
‘When CIA chief John McCone learned of the assassination, he rushed to Robert Kennedy’s home in McLean, Virginia, and stayed with him for three hours. No one else was admitted. Even Bobby’s priest was turned away. McCone told me he gave the attorney general a routine briefing on CIA business and swore that Castro’s name never came up. . . . Sources would later tell me that McCone anguished with Bobby over the terrible possibility that the assassination plots sanctioned by the president’s own brother may have backfired. Then the following day, McCone briefed President Lyndon Johnson and his National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.
Afterward McCone told subordinates—who later filled me in—what happened at that meeting. The grim McCone shared with Johnson and Bundy a dispatch from the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, strongly suggesting that Castro was behind the assassination.’562
Cuba was continually “promoted” by U.S. intelligence, as the probable perpetrators of the murder of President Kennedy.
Three days later the [Mexican] Ambassador, Thomas Mann, the CIA Station Chief, Winston Scott, and the FBI Legal Attaché, Clark Anderson, enthusiastically promoted wild allegations that Oswald’s act had been plotted and paid for inside the Cuban Embassy.563
Key CIA officials spread stories immediately after the assassination that Cuba’s Fidel Castro was behind the President’s murder.564 So, as Colonel Fletcher Prouty also observed, a whole false legend about “the President’s assassin” was quickly being force-fed to everyone by the CIA. There were people in the Agency who wanted it to quickly be assumed that the Communists were responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy.
And in addition to “controlling the spin” on those events, persons with CIA connections were also reportedly directly involved in the assassination. District Attorney Garrison’s office had no doubts about that:
His investigation led Garrison to believe that, regardless of whoever actually fired the shots in Dealey Plaza, the assassination was the result of a plot hatched in New Orleans by persons with CIA connections. Furthermore, Garrison concluded, following the assassination the CIA engaged in a cover-up to protect itself and the assassins. . . . Garrison thought that ‘the assassins were CIA employ
ees who were angered at President Kennedy’s posture on Cuba following the Bay of Pigs disaster, and that the CIA was frustrating his investigation, although the agency knew the whereabouts of the assassins.’565
Jim Garrison made it very clear that his investigation concluded that Kennedy was killed by men who had worked with the CIA from its anti-Castro operations:
The thesis Garrison has set forth is that a group of New Orleans-based, anti-Castroites, supported and/or encouraged by the CIA in their anti-Castro activities, in the late summer or early fall of 1963 conspired to assassinate John F. Kennedy. This group, according to Garrison, included [Clay] Shaw, [David] Ferrie, [Lee Harvey] Oswald . . . and others, including Cuban exiles and American anti-Castroites. . . . Their plan was executed in Dallas on November 22, 1963. At least part of their motivation . . . was their reaction to Kennedy’s decisions at the Bay of Pigs and the changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba following the missiles crisis of 1962.566
So to clarify, the CIA as an agency does not appear to have acted overtly in the assassination itself, but several “rogue” or “renegade” CIA agents, acting on their “off-the-books” mission, do appear to have been involved.
PLAYBOY: How could your probe damage the prestige of the CIA and cause them to take countermeasures against you?
GARRISON: For the simple reason that a number of the men who killed the President were former employees of the CIA involved in its anti-Castro underground activities in and around New Orleans.567
555 Hunt, Bond of Secrecy.
556 Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked.
557 Ibid.
558 Morley & Scott, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA.
559 Scott, “The CIA, the Drug Traffic, and Oswald in Mexico”.
560 Scott, “The CIA, the Drug Traffic, and Oswald in Mexico,” citing Michael Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (Simon & Schuster: 1997): history-matters.com/pds/DP3_Overview.htm
561 Scott, “The CIA, the Drug Traffic, and Oswald in Mexico,” citing Beschloss, Taking Charge and National Archives.
562 Scott, “The CIA, the Drug Traffic, and Oswald in Mexico,” citing Jack Anderson, with Daryl Gibson, Peace, War, and Politics: An Eyewitness Account (Tom Doherty Associates: 1999), 115–16.
563 Ibid.
564 Jack Anderson, “JFK plot: Did mobster’s death cover up secret,” September 8, 1976: news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2002&dat=19760908&id=3PYuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QtsFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4912,1845880
565 Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., Professor of Law, “Destiny Betrayed: The CIA, Oswald, and the JFK Assassination,” December 7, 2005, Flagpole Magazine, 8, citing Fred Powledge, “Is Garrison Faking?,” June 17, 1967, The New Republic, 13–18: law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/jfk_22destiny.html
566 Wilkes, Jr., “Destiny Betrayed,” citing Richard H. Popkin, “Garrison’s Case,” September 14, 1967: nybooks.com/articles/archives/1967/sep/14/garrisons-case/?pagination=false
567 “Jim Garrison’s Playboy Interview,” Playboy Magazine, October 1967, Vol. 14 No. 10: jfklancer.com/Garrison2.html
57
Complicity of Military Industrial Complex
It’s a practice with some writers to make thinly veiled accusations about U.S. military involvement in the assassination but not to offer anything concrete in the way of substantiation.
So instead of vague assertions that reinforce those currents we already know, I’d like to concentrate here on some specific information that I will detail.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Jones, 112th Military Intelligence Group, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas
Of all the evidence of an intelligence nature, by far the most important came— and came very quickly—from the 112th military intelligence group in Texas. A document containing this information was finally released on May 16, 1973, and it revealed that it was the 112th that had quickly named Oswald as the President’ assassin:
On November 22, the 112th MIG file was instrumental, perhaps crucial, in clinching the superficial case against Oswald as an assassin. For both the rifle said to have killed the President and the pistol said to have killed Officer Tippit had been ordered by ‘A.J. Hiddell.’ Almost immediately after the assassination, the name ‘was fed into various circuits that transmitted it to government agencies that might yield pertinent information.’ By 3:15 p.m., Colonel Robert E. Jones of the 112th MIG at Fort Sam Houston contacted the FBI in Dallas and linked Hidell to Oswald.568
That single action by Colonel Jones had rapid interpretations and huge implications:
Army intelligence declassified an extraordinary army telegram about Oswald dispatched late in the evening of November 22, 1963. The cable, from the Fourth Army Command in Texas to the U.S. Strike Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, linked Oswald to Cuba via Cuba’s alleged Communist ‘propaganda vehicle,’ the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. It also transmitted two statements about Oswald, both false, which had come via Army intelligence from the Dallas police:
‘Assistant Chief Don Stringfellow, Intelligence Section, Dallas Police Department, notified 112th Intelligence Group, this Headquarters, that information obtained from Oswald revealed he had defected to Cuba in 1959, and is a card-carrying member of Communist Party.’569
As a direct result of that false Oswald info which was disseminated very quickly after the assassination and apparently came from Colonel Robert Jones of the 112th MIG in Texas, we almost went to war.
• USSTRICOM, the U.S. Strike Command, is an extraordinary two-service command (Army and Air Force) set up in 1961 in response to the ‘Lebanon crisis’ of 1958. Designed to provide a swift strike force on short notice, its location in Florida made it singularly appropriate for a surprise attack on Cuba.
• There is a flavor of Seven Days in May to this cable of November 22, which USSTRICOM intelligence requested, since the distribution list (although confusing) suggests that it may not have reached headquarters in Washington until four days later.”
• . . . one can see the abundance of reasons behind the consensus, apparently generated by Hoover, for establishing that Oswald was just a nut who acted alone.570
The threat of a large-scale military confrontation as a result of the JFK assassination was much more concrete than is commonly believed. According to FBI agent James Hosty (who handled Oswald for the FBI), he learned from two independent sources that shortly after Oswald’s arrest:
. . . fully armed warplanes were sent screaming toward Cuba. Just before they entered Cuban airspace, they were hastily called back. With the launching of airplanes, the entire U.S. military went on alert.571
So it’s highly plausible that it was not the assassination of the 35th President of the United States that the cover-up subverted; what the cover-up precluded was the military confrontation which was designed to be the result of the assassination.
These planes would have been launched from the U.S. Strike Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. We have a cable from U.S. Army intelligence in Texas, dated November 22, 1963, telling the Strike Command [falsely] that Oswald had defected to Cuba in 1959 and was ‘a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.’ As discussed below, these allegations are incompatible with the present Phase-Two account of Oswald’s life, but were corroborated at the time. At 4:00 p.m. on the afternoon of November 22, Hoover told Bobby Kennedy that Oswald ‘went to Cuba on several occasions, but would not tell us what he went to Cuba for.’ [There is nothing in FBI files on Oswald, as released to the public, to suggest either that Oswald had visited Cuba, or that he had been interrogated about such visits by the FBI.]572
Many among those anti-Castro groups, in the military and elsewhere, had longed for serious military action against Cuba. It looks like they almost got it, too—by blaming the assassination on that set-up intelligence legend of Lee Harvey Oswald.
George L. Lumpkin, Military Intelligence
As Chris Matthews pointed out on his show, Hardball, it was really the chan
ging of the President’s motorcade route that made the assassination happen in the first place.573 Without that, you don’t have the victim in the kill zone where everything was set to go. But Chris Matthews never tells you who was responsible for that change in the parade route . . . and I will.
It was reportedly the Assistant Police Chief of Dallas: George Lumpkin. He’s the one who recommended that route to the Secret Service.574 But there was more to Assistant Chief Lumpkin than first met the eye:
Lumpkin was also a Colonel in Army intelligence and rode in the pilot car of the Kennedy motorcade that day; he was also the officer who ordered that the Texas School Book Depository Building be sealed off after the assassination, as well as the man who specifically chose Ilya Mamantov to be Marina Oswald’s Russian interpreter following the assassination.575
So as far as being involved in some very important things that enabled the assassination of President Kennedy and the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald, the virtually unknown Colonel Lumpkin was actually a man who was very close to some crucial pieces of the puzzle.
Army Cryptographer Eugene Dinkin
Dick Russell documented the testimony of Eugene B. Dinkin, who had been a cryptographic code operator for the U.S. Army in France in 1963. Dinkin intercepted secret military codes which he said were specific to a plot to kill President Kennedy. The coded information was very specific; a plot to kill the President on November 28, 1963, that was to be blamed on a Communist or Negro who would be designated as the assassin.576
Dinkin’s duties were deciphering and analyzing cable traffic messages in Western Europe, i.e. a code-breaker for the NSA (National Security Agency). In that capacity, Dinkin monitored the cable traffic in relation to the French OAS (Secret Army Organization, a radical group intent on the overthrow of France’s government), especially insofar as their attempts to assassinate French President Charles De Gaulle.577